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Hounds need to accept short term pain — MONTAGUE

It’s safe to assume that sometime within the next month, Soo Greyhounds general manager Kyle Dubas will be faced with yet another tough decision.

And it’s also safe to assume that the play of his team from now until then – exactly 12 games – will dictate which direction Dubas opts to take.

As the Hounds again hover near the bottom of the Western Conference standings, the question facing Dubas come Jan. 10 – the trade deadline – will be whether to enter the sellers market in search of assets for the future.

From a fan’s perspective, it would be nice to be talking buyers market but the Hounds have simply not shown enough to convince anyone that it’s worth jeopardizing their future to take a run at a conference championship.

Tied with the Saginaw Spirit for the final playoff spot in the conference, the Greyhounds should seriously consider trading star defenceman Ryan Sproul and centre Nick Cousins, a move that would bring them a wealth of assets and finally give them the depth and balance to build a solid team around.

By doing so, they will pay a price in the short-term but the long-term benefit could be enormous.

Far too often over the last decade, this team has struggled to ice a balanced team, deep with talent. By dealing Sproul and Cousins, they could add a number of young, promising assets to compliment the likes of Sergey Tolchinky, Jared McCann and Darnell Nurse, three young players who have displayed a tremendous amount of upside and who still have two to three years to play in the OHL.

It seems that year after year, the formula for failure for this team remains the same. They never seem to have the overall depth to compete with the league’s other top teams, mainly because too many top veterans graduate and too few rising upcomers return. You cannot win in this league consistently with just one or two lines. You need depth and balance.

Now is the chance to fix all of that. The Hounds lose Cousins, Sproul, Andrew Fritsch, Colin Miller, Michael Schumacher, Brandon Alderson and Chris Buonomo to graduation and realistically, only Fritsch (a longshot at that) and Schumacher stand to return.

And while Tolchinsky, McCann and Nurse represent three of the league’s brightest young players, who do the Hounds have to surround them with? Put simply, the rest of their returning players – aside from defenceman Alex Gudbranson and goaltenders Matt Murray and Justin Nichols – haven’t exactly lit things up, so balance could once again be a problem in the coming years.

Think of what the addition of three players of McCann or Tolchinsy’s ability can do for the future of this team, particularly if you surround them with three quality overagers. In any deal involving Cousins or Sproul, the Hounds would have to get proven young players in return, along with some high draft picks, assets a number of contending teams would be willing to part with.

After all, Cousins is a game-breaker up front. He’s one of the league’s best centres and he would significantly increase any contending team’s chance at winning a title.

In Sproul, the Hounds have a gigantic lure, a big, strong-skating defenceman who already has an NHL slapshot and who can play in all situations. And, unlike Cousins, defencemen of Sproul’s ability and impact are few and far between. Put simply, he’s a guy who would attract a lot of interest and that could result in the kind of bidding war the Hounds could benefit from

Of course, most fans only see the “now” and not the “future.”

But for a team that has struggled for so long, think of the long-term gain. You give up two guys who only have two and a half months of eligibility left on a so so team for at least four players (plus a number of high draft picks), all of whom could add up to a combined total of 20 years service.

Unless the Greyhounds display a dramatic turnaround in the next month, it’s a scenario Kyle Dubas will most certainly have to entertain.